122 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



the savants imagined that the wax was made out of 

 pollen ; but, as proved by Reaumur, it is made out 

 of honey only. 



When wax is required, the function of the glands is 

 excited by the bees artificially increasing the tem- 

 perature of the hive, and then the wax begins to flow 

 in a fluid state. 



The wasp has no such store of material for building 

 —she (both queen and neuter) can only obtain the 

 necessary material by hard work. 



According to Lord Brougham, bees and wasps are 

 marvellous mathematicians, since they have solved 

 the problem of making perfect six-sided cells with 

 the least possible expenditure of material. This is a 

 scientific fallacy ; in the first place, the cells are not 

 perfectly hexagonal ; and in the second place, the 

 workmanship does not proceed from thought and 

 measurement, but results from the mutual pressure of 

 adjoining cells, and thus the process is entirely 

 mechanical. 



The combs of bees are arranged vertically ; the 

 combs of wasps horizontally. The reason of which 

 is not far to seek. " Bees collect and store up honey, 

 which of course would run away if the cells looked 

 downwards," but as wasps collect no stores, their 

 cells may safely look downwards, particularly since 

 their young are provided with claspers at the end of 

 their tails, which prevent them from falling out, and 

 by means of which they can project their heads out 

 of the cells when about to be fed. 



Bees make cells on both sides the central plane or 

 axis ; wasps only on one side of the comb. 



Wasps clothe their vespiary with ten or twelve 

 layers of paper, through which at the lower end they 

 leave two openings — one for entrance, the other for 

 exit. Thus they avoid mutual collision. 



These thick layers of paper thoroughly protect the 

 comb from wind and rain, both when the nest is on 

 the ground, and when in the open air, in those species 

 of wasps which build in bushes. 



When the nest has to be increased in size, more 

 soil is dug out and carried away, and thus the vaulted 

 chamber is enlarged ; then the inner layer of paper is 

 removed and utilised for the enlargement of the 

 circumference of the comb, and for the fabrication of 

 another and outer layer of paper. 



The political economy of the vespiary and of the 

 hive is conducted on the same principles. 



In the time of Shakespeare everybody fancied the 

 head of a hive was a king. 



" They have a king and officers of sorts." * So he 

 writes at the commencement of a celebrated passage. 

 This view was in exact accordance with those of 

 antiquity ; thus Virgil, in his fourth Georgic, de- 

 scribed kings as leading forth the swarms, and two 

 kings are joined in mortal combat at verse 67. But 

 a far stranger notion filled their minds ; with Aris- 



totle at their head, they denied the existence of 

 fertile females amongst bees— they imagined they 

 gathered the germs of their young from flowers and 

 leaves of plants. 



" Verum ipsae e foliis natos et suavibus herbis 

 Ore legunt." — Georg. iv. 200. 



In reality, as is now well ascertained, a queen is 

 the central figure, and ruler of the family ; from her 

 all the progeny are directly descended, with a small 

 exception shortly to be mentioned. 



Sterile workers constitute the vast majority of the 

 commonwealth, but late in the season males and 

 fully-developed females make their appearance, in 

 considerable numbers, in the vespiary. In the hive, 

 the queens are always few in number. 



Both bees and wasps possess the remarkable faculty 

 of altering the sex of their offspring at will. This is 

 accomplished by the simple process of varying the 

 quality and quantity of the food administered. 



Every description of nutriment, as is now well 

 known, is reducible to two classes : the carbonaceous 

 and the nitrogenous, both of which are required by 

 all living creatures. 



Bees obtain both kinds of food exclusively from 

 flowers— the carbonaceous principle from the nectar, 

 the nitrogenous from the pollen. 



Wasps, on the contrary, get their carbonaceous 

 food partly from the nectar of flowers, but chiefly 

 from the juices of our choicest fruits, such as apricots, 

 apples, plums, gooseberries, &c. Their nitrogenous 

 nutriment they obtain from captured flies and other 

 insects, and from flesh-meat. 



Bees store up honey manufactured from nectar by 

 a kind of digestion in their honey-sac or crop, and 

 the honey is preserved from decomposition or fer- 

 mentation by the addition of a little formic acid to 



each cell.* 



The formic acid is obtained from the poison-sac of 

 the sting ; hence the sting, or rather one of the 

 constituents of the poison-sac, is not intended chiefly 

 for defensive purposes, but for the higher and more 

 useful purpose of preserving their food. 



They also store up their nitrogenous supplies in 

 the shape of bee-bread, which is compressed pollen. 



(To be continued.) 



* Henry V., act 1, scene 2. 



AN AQUATIC GARDEN. 

 By W. Augustus Carter. 



BENEATH the Malvern Hills in the neighbour- 

 hood known as Malvern Wells, there is 

 situated one of the most interesting and instructive 

 establishments of the kind in the United Kingdom, 

 viz., that devoted to the culture of birds, fish, and 



* The sugar which is contained in the nectar of flowers is 

 in the form called "cane-sugar," but after digestion it is 

 converted into the grape-sugar form. 



